At present, have 11.10 installed on a 20gb bootable partition (part of 320 gb drive)
Today, am building new i3 based system, and hope to use the same drive to host Ubuntu 11.10.
I hope/assume that a fresh install on the new build will recognise the existing partitions, and allow me to re-install in that partition...???
(Other partitions remaining as they are...data intact?)

Any comments/suggestions welcome please!!

Am hoping to transfer as much of the old machine's 'personality' (for want of a better word) to the new..!!

Once again, all input most welcome....

Thanks

To have complete control just use the manual option. Many distro's by default want to use a whole drive. It should recognize all of your partitions asumming they are formats they support and nothing is wrong with the drive.